After the beautiful evening on Mingulay and Terrence’s fantastic choc chip cookies, we headed to bed last night very happy and anticipating the cetacean encounters we might have the next day. However, this is Scotland and things do not always go to plan - we were woken in the middle of the night by the boat rocking and rolling in a terrific swell. I’m sure everyone did something similar to me – roll over and hope it was just a dream, realize it wasn’t so brace yourself against the sides of your bunk, spend the remainder of the night in a state of semi-awakeness for fear of being catapulted from your bunk onto your neighbouring crew member and cursing Scotlands fickle weather! Needless to say, there were some tired faces at breakfast and it was quickly agreed to scrap previous plans of transects en route to Muck (one of the Small Isles) and head straight for the shelter of it’s northern anchorage!

As we got underway, various extra layers were applied and a small hardcore of volunteers willing to get soaked and freezing stayed out on deck to keep the crew company. They weren’t the only ones keeping us company – we were suddenly joined at one point by about half a dozen common dolphins – they didn’t stay with us for long but were a very welcome sight in a world of grey skies and grey seas.

Mid afternoon and we’d arrived at our destination – the volunteers took a wee wander ashore to recover from the morning’s ordeal while the crew got on with some behind the scenes work (well, someone’s got to do it!) and cooking our last meal together. In typical Scottish weather style, the skies cleared and we were treated to a beautiful evening sunset.